Book Reviews : Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair. Edited by TREVOR COLBURN, with a Personal Memoir by CAROLINE ROBBINS and a Bibliographi cal Essay by ROBERT E. SHALHOPE. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974. Pp. xxxv, 315. $14.95.)
| Author | John Wettergreen |
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297402700411 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
731
BOOK
REVIEWS
Fame
and
the
Founding
Fathers:
Essays
by
Douglass
Adair.
Edited
by
TREVOR
COLBURN, with
a
Personal
Memoir
by
CAROLINE
ROBBINS
and
a
Bibliographi-
cal
Essay
by
ROBERT E.
SHALHOPE.
(New
York:
W.
W.
Norton
&
Company,
1974.
Pp.
xxxv,
315.
$14.95.)
&dquo;Fame
and
the
Founding
Fathers&dquo;
is
the
culminating
topic
of
the
life
work
of
Douglass
Adair,
the
distinguished
teacher
of
American
history.
But
Adair’s
essays
and
reviews,
here
collected
in
a
beautiful
edition,
do
more
than
chronicle
the
rise
and
fall
of
the
renown
of
Jefl’erson,
Adams,
Madison,
Hamilton,
and
Washington.
They
are
also
more
than
expositions
of
the
Fathers’
concern
with
their
own
fame.
Because
Adair
regarded
himself
as
the
caretaker
of
the
Founders’
reputation,
most
of
the
essays
explain
for
what
they
should
be
praised,
or,
at
least,
for
what
they
should
not
be
blamed.
But,
in
the
twentieth
century,
the
advent
of
scientific
and
professional
history,
as
distinguished
from
the
political
histories
of
which
Henry
Adams’
is
the
finest
example,
posed
special
problems
for
such
a
care-
takership.
Adair
seems
to
have
been
particularly
concerned
with
two
of
these
problems.
First,
the
search
for
historical
truth,
for
the
truth
about
the
particulars
of
the
past,
continually
raises
problems
of
the
authentic
meaning
of
documents.
How
much
such
problems
now
influence
judgments
of
the
Founders’
merits
appears
from
Adair’s
&dquo;Authorship
of
the
Disputed
Federalist
Papers&dquo;
and from
his
&dquo;Jeffer-
son
Scandals.&dquo;
In
the
first,
Adair
demonstrates
the
justice
of
Madison’s
claim
to
a
number
of
important
papers,
a
claim
which
had
been
disputed
for
a
century.
(Later,
Adair’s
conclusive
discoveries
were
supported
by
Mosteller
and
Wallace’s
computer
studies.)
In
&dquo;Scandals,&dquo;
he
reviews
the
evidence
for
that
old
claim
that
Jefferson
&dquo;Dreamt
of
freedom
in
a
slave’s
embrace&dquo;
and
thereby
brought
his
own
children
under
the
auctioneer’s
hammer.
The
evidence
simply
does
not
support
the
claim,
which
originated
in
the
calumnies
of
a
disappointed
oflice-seeker
and
which
now
has
been
sensationalized
in
the
name
of
psycho-history.
Of
course,
as
a
professional
historian,
Adair
could
occupy
himself
with
problems
of
authentication
as
such;
his
disclosure
of
the
most
elaborate
hoax
ever
perpetrated
on
American
historians
(&dquo;The
Mystery
of
the
Horn
Papers&dquo;)
is
a
masterpiece
of detective
work.
But
he
always
somehow
understood
that
authentication
is
merely
instrumental
to
understanding.
Such
seeming
foibles
as
&dquo;A
Note
on
Certain
of
Hamilton’s
Pseudonyms,&dquo;
&dquo;What
was
Hamilton’s
’Favorite
Song’?&dquo;
or
&dquo;Rumbold’s
Dying
Speech,
1685,
and
Jefferson’s
Last
Words
on
Democracy,
1826&dquo;
are
wonderful
examples
of
authentication
of
historical
sources.
They
are
more
remarkable
as
examples
of
why
authentication
is
enlightening;
a
pseudonym,
a
song,
a
few
famous
words
can
illumine
important
matters,
when
their
sources
are
comprehended.
Second,
the
professional
historians’
habit
of
explaining
public
events
in
terms
of
private
motives
posed
a
problem
for
Adair’s
caretakership:
no
public
man’s
reputation
can
stand,
if
his
deeds
are
so
explained;
somehow
it is
more
honorable
to
be
a
political
bungler
than
to
be
greedy,
lustful,
ambitious,
envious,
fanatical.
Most
of
Adair’s
essays
treat
one
or
another
of
such
motives:
greed,
what
historians
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